Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s7.7

c12.s7.7

Then again the language in which they were known to Aśoka was neither Sanskrit nor Pāli. The titles of texts which Aśoka mentions in his edict have marked Māgadhi characteristics (cf. aliya for Pāli ariya, Lāghulo for Rāhula, the termination e as in -sute, samukase, for Pāli o). Admitting that Aśoka was quoting the exact titles of the texts known to him, the conclusion is inevitable that the form in which he knew them was Māgadhi. This pre-Aśokan Māgadhi canon was not yet a well-constituted Tripiṭaka, as the Pāli tradition would have us believe, but a literature still in the making. It should be remembered that although there was occasion for it, Aśoka does not mention either the piṭaka or the nikāya, words which occur on the Buddhist monuments within a century from Aśoka's time. It is therefore almost clear that the literature was not yet available in the time of Aśoka in a tangible form and that the community was not yet much given to the scripture. But a lead had already been given in this direction either by Aśoka on his own initiative or by Magadhan church and the old traditions had begun to be collected. Hence arose the necessity of encouraging the monks as well as the laymen to study them. Under these circumstances it is permitted to take some of the traditions embodied in the Buddhist canon as old and genuine.